On the second day I received from Paris a package and a letter. The package contained a full bonbonnière from Boissier, the accompanying letter a few polite lines. There was nothing out of the ordinary in it, but it intoxicated me outright, for it was signed with the name of Heraclius of Georgia, and from its thick paper adorned with a princely crown there exhaled a faint, but peculiarly sweet, fragrance. This letter-sheet and the sandalwood fan—both told me untranslatable things. On the third day I went over to the Dedopali’s with quick-beating heart. I found her in her usual place in the little drawing-room. “Ah, _bon jour_, Contessina—I have a greeting to transmit to you. My cousin writes me from Paris.... He was to be here to-day himself, but—I am not surprised at it in him, he is a man of moods—instead of coming, he writes to bid me farewell for this year; he left Paris yesterday to go direct to Tiflis.” And I—silly thing—I burst into tears. “For God’s sake, what is the matter, Contessina?” “Oh, Dedopali,—it is too cruel!” “What?... that my cousin has gone home? So you are in love with him?... Perhaps it may be your fate after all,—he may come back again; don’t cry. No man deserves to have a girl cry for him if he is capable of passing by his own good luck like that. Besides, all may yet turn out as your heart desires.” These words were a balm to me. Merely the right to hope,—that is all that youth desires. And so I hoped that Heraclius would write me from Georgia. But he did not.— VIII NOVITIATE IN ART Back to Baden · Singing lessons · Great hopes · A test before Madame Viardot However, it was not an inordinately long time before the image of the Georgian prince had grown dim in my memory. And gradually, once more, something quite new became the object of my life, the “one important thing.” We returned to Baden greatly disappointed—my mother in her great hopes of gain, which had to be exchanged for no inconsiderable certainty of loss, and I in my exploded dream of love; and there we proposed to live very quietly and frugally in our country house, and spend the winter too in seclusion there. We had a lodger in our house, an old music teacher, who had been an orchestra conductor. One day he asked to see us. “Pardon me, Frau Gräfin, and pardon me, Komtesse,[15] if I permit myself to make this call; but I consider it my duty—it is perhaps a question of something great and rare—something extraordinary in the Komtesse’s fate, something which—” He struggled to find words. “Well, what do you mean?” asked my mother, and I too was keyed up to a high pitch. (“Something great and rare”—those who are hungry for life are always looking for that with yearning eyes.)